PREFACE.
The following Work, remarkable for its vivid description of the general condition of the people throughout Europe at the period of its publication, has lost none of its interest now, when many of our social evils have been greatly aggravated and extended, although some have been alleviated or removed. Machinery—which, in a rightly constituted society, based upon Christian principles, would prove invariably a blessing—has, under the present system, increased the struggles and intensity of competition, and depressed, by overwhelming, the labour market—producing the two extremes of super-abundance and destitution.
The title of the work has not been happily chosen, implying, as it does, that the effects described are the necessary consequences of civilisation; whereas, they can be regarded only as the result of an imperfect state of civilisation in the progress of society.
